


Death's Avatar (The Gift that Keeps on Taking Remix)

by Bow



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Sandman
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-15
Updated: 2005-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-14 01:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bow/pseuds/Bow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dumbledore strikes a bargain, and Snape lives with the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death's Avatar (The Gift that Keeps on Taking Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Death's Avatar](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/2092) by Lizbee. 



> Written for We Invented the Remix...Redux IV as a remix of lizbee's excellent Death's Avatar.

"Severus, wake," said Dumbledore, bringing his palm to rest on Severus's forehead--the weight of it gentle, yet heavy all the same. And as Severus opened his eyes, the sediment clouding his mind began to settle. He remembered, now, why the Headmaster's nose was freshly broken, why his own mouth tasted sour like asphodel, why he was lying in the infirmary in the first place.

Dumbledore had dueled Death to save him. He had struck a Bargain. Severus swallowed, ashamed that he had tried to kill himself, sorry he had tried to use poison instead of a knife.

"Sugar quill?" Dumbledore asked, tucking one with green plumage into Severus's clenched fist. "You've had quite a night, my boy." His eyes shone as he leaned over the bed, and he smiled--a weary, patient smile, with blood at one corner of his mouth. "You may be angry with me now, but I hope you will come to understand why I could not let you go. Your life, Severus, is a gift."

Dumbledore left the hospital wing soon afterward, leaving Severus alone but for the charmed get-well card Sirius Black had sent him. When Madam Pomfrey was out of earshot, it hissed insults from the rubbish bin, where it lay torn in half.

Severus closed his eyes again and rubbed the point of the sugar quill against his tongue, thinking over burdens to bear, debts to be repaid, and how Death had his grandmother's dark eyes.

***

But this time Death's eyes are green, her hair red and lovely as cherry wood. "It's been so long, Severus," she whispers, and she smiles at him as though they are old friends.

"I need the boy," he says. He has no patience for idle chatter.

 _"Need,"_ she repeats, the word almost a laugh. "How selfish of you, how human. Anyhow, what need have you of Harry Potter?"

"This is not _my_ errand," he says low, "or my choice. The need is not mine. Surely you must realise that."

"Surely," she echoes. "But then why have you come in Albus's stead?"

Severus stands and watches her, both because she is beautiful and because there's no telling what she might try if he were to turn his back. He is lucky that she is in a benevolent mood today, that his silence doesn't make her spiteful. Even if he wished to, he could not reply; she has managed to ask the single question he can't answer.

***

"Severus, wake," whispered Dumbledore, and Severus, who had not been sleeping, shut his eyes tighter. Dumbledore sighed. "Very well, then. If you should like to speak with me further at any time, you shall always know where to find me." He placed a small box of sugar quills, still wrapped, on Severus's bedside table. "I've brought these for you. I remember that you liked them once."

After Dumbledore left, shuffling slowly away, Severus scrabbled for his wand and cast _Incendio_ on the package of sweets. The smoke stuck in his nostrils and made him cough. Clearly, the Headmaster's show of concern was nothing but an act. The Gryffindors had tried to _kill_ him, and instead of punishment, Potter was lauded as a hero, Lupin was protected, and Black was still as popular as ever.

If a threat to Severus's life was worth only a few meager nights of detention and an insincere apology, Dumbledore's gift had been a very cheap one. Why had he bothered to save Severus at all, to cross wands with Death and fight to bring him home, to carry him back to Hogwarts like a sleeping child, light in his arms?

Why hadn't Dumbledore spared Natalie Rookwood instead? She'd been thrown from her broom during Hufflepuff's Quidditch tryouts, and the angle her head made with her body there on the ground was not an image that was easy to forget.

 _Had she not been worthy of Dumbledore's grace?_ Severus wondered, and if only he did not detest the old fool so much just then, he might have asked him.

***

"And what if I were to keep him, Severus? Here with me, where he belongs--what then?" Without looking away, Death gestures backward toward Potter's prone form. His eyeglasses are missing, and his dirty face is covered in hex marks and fresh cuts from Dark curses. He is mortal after all. If the boy lives--if Severus succeeds in bringing him back--they will surely leave scars. "I don't issue second chances lightly."

Severus thinks of Dumbledore's crooked nose. "I know."

"And besides, Harry is _tired._ He wants to stay here," she said, "just as once you chose to be here with me."

"That was quite a long time ago."

"Not to me, it isn't." She cocks an eyebrow. "You wanted to live forever, as I recall. One way or another."

"Enough. You know why I'm here this time." Severus nods toward Harry. "Let the boy return to the world of the living for now. No doubt, you'll have him back soon enough."

"Soon," she repeats slowly, treating the word as though it were a novelty. "But I already have him now."

***

"Severus, wake," called Dumbledore, bursting into his bedchambers in his nightdress. "I have a task for you, and I'm afraid you must not tarry." In hushed tones, he shared the few details he knew: Harry's flight from Hogwarts after supper that night, the ambush, the body a Squib had found on the ground in Mauchline.

So Severus had done as he was told, had not even questioned the Headmaster, his fingers flying to match buttons to buttonholes in the dark. And he had recited the incantations, met Death on her own terms, done for Potter everything that Dumbledore had done for him so many years ago.

It occurred to him not for the first time that his life hadn't been a gift so much as a loan.

***

"Let us duel, for him, then," Death says, smiling again. "It's only fair." It occurs to him, finally, that this smile of hers is awfully predatory. She has quite a lot of teeth.

He wins--and quickly--but he knows it is only because she'd made up her mind to let him. She's the type that likes to play with her quarry.

"You're in my debt, Severus Snape. You've left me twice, now, and there are few who can claim that."

He scowls instead of answering her, and she shifts the boy into his arms, leaning in to kiss Severus on the forehead.

"There's a shortcut back, one that only I know," she tells him, "just beyond that hill," but he takes the known route, the safer option. He'd be a fool to trust her. Potter's head is cradled in the crook of his arm, lolling as Severus moves. His bony body seems heavier by the minute as Severus carries him down from that awful mountain.

He finally sets the boy down in a bed in the hospital wing, and Madam Pomfrey begins to fuss immediately. Severus stretches his sore arms and retreats to his rooms before anyone can ask him for more.

***

 _"Sleep, Severus,"_ said Death, who'd managed to infiltrate his dreams, and he woke himself to spite her.

He returned to the hospital wing out of morbid curiosity, sitting on an empty bed to rest. Though Madam Pomfrey eyed him suspiciously as she bustled through, she never asked him to leave. Everything there was how it should be, yet how it never should've been--they were both of them alive and breathing again, Potter's bedside table threatening to collapse under the weight of his get-well cards.

It wasn't long before Dumbledore turned up, rummaging through the pockets of his robes to retrieve a sack of sherbet lemons. He frowned at the crowded bedside table, enlarging it with a flick of his wand to make space for the new gift.

"Severus," he whispered, startling as he looked up, "I was just on my way to visit your rooms. The Wizarding World cannot thank you enough for what you've done. For saving Harry."

"I am yours to command."

"I'm sure Harry will wish to thank you, too, but we mustn't disturb his rest."

"That's hardly necessary," Severus said, wishing suddenly, futilely, that Death had taken his life in exchange for Potter's. "And of course we mustn't."

Dumbledore conferred briefly with Madam Pomfrey, glanced anxiously at Potter's records, and then he was gone again.

The golden ribbon on the bag of sweets glinted in the light of the rising sun. "Wake, Potter," Severus said roughly, and waited for him to open his eyes.


End file.
